Our
STAR WEB interface to the ESTC gives you almost full access to a whole
series of indexing capabilities, beyond the simple ones that are
represented by the search page options. Those rich features can be
exploited by checking the Expert search box by the Keyword search line.
Once you have checked the Expert search box, you can formulate complex
Boolean and proximity searches that call upon combinations of dozens of
indexes.

While more flexible, expert searching is more complex and requires a
detailed knowledge of both existing indexes and search syntax for our
system. It is to be used as a last option, after the simple search
strategies have failed to produce the result you expect. However,
reading this page can give you useful insights and tips that can
sometimes save a lot of time and effort. It is up to you to find the
right balance for your needs.

Index categories

Pseudo indexes
actually
combine together several pre-existing indexes. In other words,
they allow you to trace data across multiple fields: title,
author, subject, etc.

Fields indexes
are actual
indexes that records strings from the beginning of a field, or the
beginning of a subfield.

Words indexes
are indexes
that record the location of words, regardless of the position of that
word in a field or subfield

Real indexes (i.e. Fields and Words) are defined as a combination of
input field and subfield source, basic indexing rule, and proximity
options. In the case of subfields, it is possible to create an index
with a selective range of subfields, for instance only subfield a, or
subfields a and b, leaving out subfield c. Pseudo indexes are dependent
upon the real indexes that compose them. For isntance, if you have a
pseudo index called "Title", that index may depend upon two other
indexes, one that indexes the subfield a of the 245 using the Fields
basic rule, and one that indexes every word in the 245 regardless of
subfield location.

As a matter of
convention, index names that end with a "W" (like 100W) are word
indexes, and the ones that end with an F are field indexes (600F).
Additionally, index names that end wth "ALL" often refer to a pseudo
index that combines both word and field indexing. However, it is always
best to refer to the tables to be sure.

Proximity Operations

In addition to the basic indexing rules, an index can be modified to
provide the user proximity operations. This allows you to specify for
instance
that you are searching for two terms in the same occurence of a
repeating field. The index can even be set to keep track
of terms that are within the same sentence or paragraph, or even at a
certain distance from each other. In the list of options given in the
index tables below (see ESTC Pseudo Indexes,
ESTC Words Indexes, ESTC Fields
Indexes):

ADJ indicates that you can specify how close or
NEAR you want a
term to
be from another,

S means that you can indicate that two terms
should be in the
same sentence,

O means that you can chose to search two or more
terms that are
contained in the same occurence of the field.

Search syntax

Our STAR interface supports a rich and flexible range of searching
strategies and options that allow you to use the full capability of the
indexing options detailed above.

ALL OPERATORS ARE CASE INSENSITIVE: however I will use capital
letters
below to make the syntax clearer

Basic search

A basic search can done by giving the name of the index, followed by
an
equal sign, followed by the search term itself:

Example: 100ALL = Voltaire
Example: 100F=Milton, John

BOOLEAN syntax

Basic searches be combined according with the familiar BOOLean
operators: AND, OR, AND NOT and OR NOT. These operators can be used
either with the same index or with different indexes:

Example: 100ALL=Milton AND John
Example: 100F=Milton, John* AND PUBCITY=Paris
Example: 100ALL=Milton AND TI=(Paradise OR regained)

Proximity searches

The most common proximity operator is the NEAR operator. This is
equivalent to the BOOLean AND opertor together with the restrictions
included in the definition of the index itself. For instance, the 650
fields index is with the field "Occurence" options, that indexes every
subfield starting at the beginning.

Example: 650=catholic* NEAR apologetic*

In this case, the search will retrieve all records that have at
least
one occurence of the 650 input field that contains two subfields one
beginning with "Catholic", the other with "apologetic".

Example: 500=wing NEAR deprecated

The 500 is a words index, that has the options ADJacent, and
Occurence:
This will retrieve a record in which the two words occur in the same
occurence of the 500 data field.

If you want to specify that the two words "wing" and "deprecated"
should be not only contained within the same occurence, but also close
to each other, in the same sentence, you would use the syntax:

Example: 500=wing W/S deprecated

The W/S operator means "within the same sentence".

If you want the two words to be not only in the same sentence but no
further from each other than 4 other words, you would use:

Example: 500=wing W/4 deprecated

In this case, W/4 means "within four words". You can replace the 4
with
any number: w/2, w/9, etc.

Proximity and BOOLean operators can be combined:

Example: 100ALL=(Milton NEAR John) AND TI=((paradise w/2
regained) OR
(paradise W/S lost))
Example: TI=(paradise NEAR lost) AND NOT 100ALL=(Milton OR Voltaire)

As shown in the last example, parentheses can be used to resolve
logical ambiguities.